Perspective taking promotes action understanding and learning

People often learn actions by watching others. The authors propose and test the hypothesis that perspective taking promotes encoding a hierarchical representation of an actor's goals and subgoals-a key process for observational learning. Observers segmented videos of an object assembly task into coarse and fine action units. They described what happened in each unit from either the actor's, their own, or another observer's perspective and later performed the assembly task themselves. Participants who described the task from the actor's perspective encoded actions more hierarchically during observation and learned the task better.     

Direct and indirect bully‐victims: differential psychosocial risk factors associated with adolescents involved in bullying and victimization

The present study examined psychosocial risk factors that differentiated direct and indirect bully‐victims from bullies, victims and uninvolved adolescents. A total of 7,290 (3,756 girls) students (ages 13–18 yr) from a region of Southern Ontario, Canada, completed a number of self‐report measures to determine the relation between direct and indirect bullying and victimization and several psychosocial risk factors, including normative beliefs about antisocial acts, angry‐externalizing coping, social anxiety, depression, self‐esteem, temperament, attachment, parental monitoring and peer relational problems. ANCOVA and logistic regression analyses indicated that indirect bully‐victims and victims were similar in demonstrating greater internalizing problems and peer relational problems than indirect bullies and uninvolved participants. Furthermore, adolescents involved in indirect bullying (bullies, bully‐victims) reported a higher level of normative beliefs legitimizing antisocial behaviour and less parental monitoring (males only) than indirect victims and uninvolved participants. Only normative beliefs legitimizing antisocial behaviour distinguished direct bully‐victims and bullies from victims and uninvolved adolescents. Results illuminate the distinct characteristics of direct and indirect bully‐victims; theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 32:551–569. 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Information continuity across the response selection bottleneck: Early parallel Task 2 response activation contributes to overt Task 2 performance

Several studies of dual-task performance have demonstrated Task 2 to Task 1 response priming (backward compatibility effects), indicating some degree of parallel response computation for concurrent tasks and suggesting that the well-established response selection bottleneck (RSB) model may be incomplete. However, the RSB might be considered to remain informationally intact if this early parallel Task 2 response information does not persist across the attentional shift between tasks to contribute to overt Task 2 performance. We used an adapted psychological refractory period paradigm with an additional early transient Task 2 stimulus to examine whether response information generated for Task 2 in parallel with overt Task 1 response selection could persist across the bottleneck to influence eventual overt Task 2 performance. After controlling for potential indirect effects of Task 1 processing stage variability propagating onto Task 2 reaction time via locus of slack effects, we observed reliable and consistent effects of early Task 2 response information facilitating Task 2 reaction times. These effects were observed only when the responses to both tasks of the dual-task pair were compatible, under both univalent and bivalent response mappings across tasks. These findings may represent evidence of a variably sensitive response gating or suppression mechanism in dual-task performance and support the idea that backward response compatibility effects represent transient informational influences on central response codes, rather than later postbottleneck response execution processes.     

Risk in a parent's eyes: Effects of gender and parenting experience

The present study is an attempt to investigate how sex of parent, parenting experience, and child's gender influence parents' reactions to risky and annoying behaviors of children. The subjects were 15 sets of expectant parents and 16 sets of parents from each of three other family configurations (one boy, one girl, or both a boy and a girl). The subjects viewed a 23-minute videotape composed of 22 videoclips. Each videoclip depicted a common activity for a 12- to-36-month-old child that could elicit parental intervention because of risk or annoyance or both. Fifteen scenes were acted by children who had been previously rated as gender ambiguous in appearance. The audio portion of the tape identified each genderambiguous child as a boy to some subjects and as a girl to others. The subjects were instructed to press buttons to indicate when they would respond and the types of response (physical or verbal) they would make. Analyses showed strong effects of parenting experience for latency and number of interventions. Generally, parents of one boy intervened most quickly, followed by parents of two children, parents of one girl, and expectant parents. The gender label manipulation showed effects only on the high risk tapes. Mothers responded more than fathers in situations that were annoying but not risky. Mothers and fathers agreed when children were engaged in risky behaviors. The use of videoclips to study parent socialization is a useful supplement to observations and self-report questionnaires.Preparation of the gender labeling tasks was supported in part by BRSG Grant 50 7RR07080 awarded by the Biomedical Research Support Program, Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health. Part of the article is based on the doctoral dissertation of the first author, presented to the Department of Psychology, University of Oregon. Data analyses and preparation of the article were completed while the third author was on a postdoctoral fellowship (Grant 1 T32 MH 16955-01) through the Oregon Social Learning Center.     

Context effects: Classroom tests and context independence

Contextual dependence has been hypothesized to influence classroom test performance such that taking a test away from the lecture room should lead to lower test scores (Abernethy, 1940). We studied the performances of students who took typical college tests in rooms different from the lecture rooms and made comparisons to classmates who remained in the lecture rooms. No statistically reliable effects were found in 21 such comparisons in seven courses. Although contextual dependence has been produced under laboratory control, college classes induce students to decontextualize information. The theoretical utility of contextual associations is based on simpler, more tightly controlled conditions, and generalization to representative situations is an empirical matter.     

Sense of Community in Clubhouse Programs: Member and Staff Concepts

Psychological sense of community within psychosocial rehabilitation clubhouse programs was examined using concept mapping with 18 members and 18 staff from 10 programs. Members identified four concepts: Recovery, social connections, membership, and tasks and roles. Members described hope and healing as aspects of recovery. Members' views on sense of community focused on the rehabilitation and social nature of the program. Staff also identified four concepts: Affiliation and support for members, shared experiences, clubhouse organization, and task and roles. The staff concept of clubhouse organization, which incorporated the ideas of leadership and organization of physical space and the concept of task and roles, was based on ideas of shared responsibility and clubhouse procedures. Staffs' views on sense of community strongly reflected their formal training in clubhouse principles. The relation of these concepts to McMillan and Chavis' theoretical framework for sense of community is discussed and recommendations for practice provided. Sandra E. Herman is now an independent program evaluation consultant. Catherine Ferguson is now an independent consultant on psychosocial programs.     

Evidence for dissociable neural mechanisms underlying inference generation in familiar and less-familiar scenarios

In this study, we investigated whether the left and right hemispheres are differentially involved in causal inference generation. Participants read short inference-promoting texts that described either familiar or less-familiar scenarios. After each text, they performed a lexical decision on a letter string (which sometimes constituted an inference-related word) presented directly to the left or right hemisphere. Response-time results indicated that hemisphere of direct presentation interacted with type of inference scenario. When test stimuli were presented directly to the left hemisphere, lexical decisions were facilitated following familiar but not following less-familiar inference scenarios, whereas when test stimuli were presented directly to the right hemisphere, facilitation was observed in both familiar and less-familiar conditions. Thus, inferences may be generated in different ways depending on which of two dissociable neural subsystems underlies the activation of background information.     

Putting the partner within reach: a dyadic perspective on felt security in close relationships

The authors argue that felt insecurity in a partner's positive regard and caring stems from a specifically dyadic perception--the perception that a partner is out of one's league. A cross-sectional sample of dating couples revealed that people with low self-esteem feel inferior to their partner and that such feelings of relative inferiority undermine felt security in the partner's regard. Three experiments examined the consequences of reducing such perceived discrepancies by pointing to either strengths in the self or flaws in the partner. Low, but not high, self-esteem participants reacted to new strengths in the self or faults in the partner by reporting greater felt security in their specific partner's positive regard and commitment and more positive, general feelings about their own interpersonal worth. Thus, putting the partner more within the psychological grasp of low self-esteem people may effectively increase felt security in the partner's regard.